The rise of social media has made it more important for businesses to get the marketing fundamentals right. We've often seen businesses coming to us for social media marketing with one goal and that is increasing their fan followers and like counts. Sadly, many businesses still look at social media in isolation. To exploit the many opportunities presented by social media, businesses need to integrate social media with marketing mix while keeping an unwavering eye on their marketing fundamentals. Check these digital marketing courses to learn how businesses can use social media to connect more meaningfully with their customers, build a community around their brand and add to their bottom line.
Need help to align social media activity with core business-related metrics and objectives? Get in touch with us today.
What's social media marketing?
Wikipedia defines social media marketing as the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. Other websites also define social media marketing along the same lines - that is promoting a business, its services/products on channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram.
Social media marketing in its truest form goes beyond driving product sales across different channels. It's about forming relationships with consumers and turning them into your brand advocates; it's about keeping brand promises; it's about being authentic and accountable.
How to hire a social media marketing agency?
You can watch our educational video on agency selection. Also, our CEO, Aji Issac, keeps on sharing new industry insights on his LinkedIn Page
Role of social media marketing
1. Social media's role in lead generation
When integrated with your marketing mix in the right way, social media can be used as an effective lead generation tool. For instance, we ran a lead generation campaign on social media for a cloud-based AI platform for one of their events. We got 100 leads by spending a minimum budget of £500 which resulted in a packed house on the day of event. We can share some of our successful case studies with you - to help you understand how we execute lead generation campaigns on social media. Get in touch with our marketing team.
2. Social media's role in crisis management
One of the most quoted examples of brands using social media for crisis management is P&G. When the company introduced Dry Max technology into its diaper lines an angry customer whose child had developed diaper rash, created a Facebook page to pressurize the company to withdraw the product. In a matter of weeks, more than 7000 parents had joined the campaign. It was a big talking point with moms from different parts of the country uploading pictures and videos of their babies' diaper rashes, thus leading the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to open an investigation. However, P&G stood its ground because it was confident in its product’s performance. With the help of its social channels Pampers Village and Pampers Facebook page, P&G responded to all the complaints and advised the parents. Because of its vast experience in manufacturing baby diapers, the brand knew that there will be a small number of cases where babies would develop rashes. And the company made its case sympathetically but clearly. Later the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reported that it couldn't find any relation between Dry Max and the occurrence of diaper rash. Far from curbing P&G’s enthusiasm for social media, this incident helped the company hone its approach.
3. Social media's role in creating a sense of community
If done the right way, social media campaigns can help the businesses connect with their audience and turn them into a community - thus building a stronger relationship. When Weight Watchers, one of the leading providers of weight management services, launched their Simple Start campaign they promoted the new eating plan with commercials and the Simple Start app. What's noteworthy is that the way they effectively leveraged the power of social media to get the word out by creating a sense of community. They created the hashtag #SimpleStart to inspire the members to join the conversation, post their weight loss success stories, recipes and weight loss tips. The #SimpleStart social media campaign inspired the users to work together and achieve their weight loss goals. Thus, rather than the brand overhyping about its new eating plan, it was the community that was promoting the plan.
4. Social media's role in creating brand awareness
A well-integrated social media campaign helps a business reach its target audience with the right branding and messaging and right tools. For instance, when a popular Vietnamese beauty brand launched a campaign called “Beauty Revolution” to change the narrative around women’s traditional roles in Vietnam they leveraged the power of Facebook ads. They repurposed one of their old TV commercials into a series of mobile-optimized 15-second vertical videos. The videos also featured well-known Vietnamese celebrities from different age groups who spoke to women of their age. The brand awareness campaign on Facebook reached over 3.9 million people.
Inspiring social media campaigns
Check some of the famous well-integrated social campaigns that garnered engagement from the users, influenced the sales jump, and accelerated the company's growth agenda.